New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday issued notices to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia and others on a revision petition filed by former Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, in connection with a 2018 case of alleged assault on him.
Special Judge Geetanjali Goel sought the responses of Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and nine others on the plea challenging an earlier order that discharged the politicians.
The court asked them to submit their responses in the further hearing in the case on November 23.
“The Trial Court even while selectively relying on and considering the material available on record, has arrived at divergent findings qua the accused persons, without any basis or justification, by applying different yardstick for different accused persons in relation to their role and involvement in the crime,” the review petition read.
The petitioner stated that the accused under a well-planned and well designed conspiracy physically assaulted, humiliated and criminally intimidated him because he was not agreeing to the illegal directions to issue TV advertisements (on the occasion of the AAP Government completing 3 years in office) in violation of the guidelines of the Supreme Court and there were other issues in relation to the rates of such advertisements.
On August 11, a Delhi court dropped charges against Kejriwal, Sisodia, and nine other Aam Aadmi Party MLAs — Rajesh Rishi, Nitin Tyagi, Praveen Kumar, Ajay Dutt, Sanjeev Jha, Rituraj Govind, Rajesh Gupta, Madan Lal and Dinesh Mohania.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sachin Gupta, however, had passed an order framing charges against two AAP MLAs — Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal in this case.
Police had registered a case on the complaint of Anshu Prakash, who alleged that he was manhandled by the AAP MLAs on the intervening night of February 19 and 20, 2018 at Kejriwal’s residence when he was called for a meeting.
After investigation, police filed a chargesheet under sections 186 (obstructing a public servant), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from doing his duty), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant to discharge his duties), 504 (insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 506(ii),120B (criminal conspiracy), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express is made for its punishment), 114 (abettor present when offence is committed),149 (unlawful assembly) 34 (common intention) and 36 (an effect caused partly by act and partly by omission) against the accused persons.
Earlier, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal had granted bail to all the accused in October 2018 on the condition that they will submit a bail bond of Rs 50,000 each and not try to tamper with the evidence or influence the witnesses in the matter.
(IANS)